Bedlam
by Helen Fayle
Summary: The Doctor and Sarah's holiday on an unoccupied planet is cut short by a mysterious, unseen force... Previously published in "Missing Pieces"


****

Bedlam

By Helen Fayle

~~~

__

Imagine existence, as viewed in monochrome, in silence. 

'Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion.'

I think I read that somewhere.

Dark in here, isn't it?

~~~

'Our dried voices, when 

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless 

As wind in dry grass - ' 

Sarah paused. 'It's no use, Eliot's too gloomy for a day like this.'

The Doctor looked across at her. 'I always preferred old Reverend Dodgson myself - 'The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax - Of cabbages-and kings!' He declaimed loudly. Sarah stared at him over the edge of her book.

'Hardly poetry.'

'It has a certain elegant eccentricity, you must admit. And just as psychologically murky in his own way, was the good Reverend. The little girl was very charming, though.'

'Hmm.' She put the book down. 'I don't know what it is, but there's something about a place this tranquil that makes me nervous. I keep waiting for something dreadful to happen.'

'After all this time, I thought you'd realise that's not far from the truth.' He lay back in the grass and pushed his hat down over his face.

Sarah looked at their surroundings, and sighed. 'Pity, I was beginning to enjoy it here!'

The cloudless sky had a slight lilac tinge that Sarah found surprisingly restful. With no higher life forms to disturb the flora and fauna, the planet was peaceful, pleasant and clean: no pollutants to spoil the fresh scent of the air - full, she'd noticed, of the heady scent of the flowers that seemed to be so prevalent here. Trees seemed to be a rarity; the hillsides sported nothing larger than large cycads, although the plants covered the ground thickly. The largest creature she'd seen so far looked like a giant multicoloured hybrid of a dragonfly, a bee and a butterfly. The Doctor seemed to think that they were harmless, however.

'Look at the mouthparts,' he said when she asked. 'It's designed for collecting pollen, or whatever these flowers produce. And there's no sting.' She'd taken his word for it, but there was no chance she was voluntarily getting close to a two foot long flying bug, regardless of how harmless it might be. The Doctor, as ever, had showed no such reticence, managing to get one specimen to alight on his outstretched arm. He'd been most put out when she'd told him that it clashed with his scarf. She stood up and stretched.

'I'm going for a walk, coming?'

The Doctor mumbled something incomprehensible; one hand waved vaguely in her direction. Smiling, Sarah set off, deciding to explore what lay beyond a small hill to the west.

~~~

__

Movement. Colour. Light. Thought. Sound.

Vibration: Objects at rest or in motion. The movement of particles, the dance of the quanta.

It's all one, when you look at it from the right angle.

Or is that 'look at it from a right angle'?

Madness is in the mind of the beholder.

It's all very confusing.

~~~

Standing on the top of a hill, Sarah looked down into a shallow river valley - and at a large complex of buildings, mostly fallen into ruin, about a quarter of a mile away. 

'Uninhabited, eh?' She glanced over her shoulder, back in the direction of where she'd left the Doctor, some five minutes ago. 'Hmmph. Shows how much you know!' She toyed briefly with the idea of going back for him, but decided against it. The place looked deserted after all, and he'd sworn that there were no unpleasant life forms nearby. 

Grinning to herself, she started down the hill at a walk, giving in to impulse half way down, and breaking into a run. Laughing breathlessly, she let her momentum carry her forward, enjoying the freedom of movement. Cooped up in the TARDIS too long, she told herself. Just this once, they'd found a nice, quiet, uninhabited planet with the first chance in weeks to relax and recover.

Or had they? For one brief moment, something seemed to brush past Sarah's mind. Standing still, gasping as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice cold water over her, she shivered, despite the warmth of the breeze. She shrieked as a hand clasped her shoulder.

'You should pay more attention - I could have been anyone!'

'Doctor!' Sarah whirled around and glared at him. 'You were the one who said there was nothing here that could be dangerous, remember?' Just for good measure she thumped him.

'Well, ' he said expansively. ' I've been wrong before. It never pays to be careless, Sarah Jane.' He waggled a finger under her nose. 'And it's most unlike you to be jumpy.' But he too was looking around as if he didn't feel quite as comfortable anymore. 

'I thought I felt something - just for a moment. Maybe I imagined it - '

The Doctor turned his beaming grin on. Positively schizophrenic sometimes, she thought. 'I think we should take a look around, don't you?' He was all bounce now. 'But you stay close to me from now on, understand?' She bit her lip, but held back the retort. Honestly, she could take care of herself. But if it made him feel better… She settled for a little nod instead.

The Doctor pointed at the ruins.

'Do you know, this planet wasn't supposed to be inhabited. Shall we?'

'What about whatever it was that I felt?' Sarah asked. He grinned at her. 

'You'll just have to protect me, won't you? Come along Sarah!' And he was off, striding out like a king on a progress through a court, scarf trailing behind him, fluttering in the breeze.

Sarah shook her head. Never, ever, if she lived to be a hundred, did she think she'd come close to understanding him. 

She had to run to keep up.

~~~

__

All that I can tell is I'm insane insane again.

Don't walk on the grass.

Here we go round the prickly pear.

No cacti on this planet. But it has such lovely flowers.

Do pay attention.

~~~

Sarah sat down on a convenient hummock of broad-leafed viridian plants that seemed to be this planet's answer to the universal equation known as 'grass'. Nibbling on a jelly baby, she watched the Doctor as he prowled up and down in front of the largest of the buildings. She stifled a smile as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and stomped back towards her.

'Language!' Sarah said, overhearing one of the choicer sotto voce comments.

'Hmph.'

She held out a crumpled white paper bag: 'Have a jelly baby instead?'

He took one, then took the bag, sat down heavily beside her, and bit the head off an inoffensive sweet. 

'It looks solid. At first touch, it even feels solid - every sense says it's there - '

'So why, ' Sarah finished for him 'does your hand go straight through it, you want to know?' She tapped him on the arm and whispered conspiratorially: 'You don't need to declaim, you know - you haven't got an audience!' He shot her a withering look, then stared silently at the sky.

Sarah grinned at him, about to suggest that she thought Time Lord interference a bit unlikely this time, but he just pulled a face at her and balled up the empty bag and tucked it into a pocket, before getting up and heading for the building/illusion/forcefield again. Sarah followed him, shaking her head ruefully.

The buildings were, the Doctor had told her, of human construction. He seemed to think that it was some kind of medical facility. The place was deserted, and the grounds heavily overgrown. From a distance, Sarah had thought that the complex was in ruins. Yet this close, the buildings looked new: there was no sign of rust, weathering, mould - nothing. The Doctor had muttered something about not jumping to conclusions about growth patterns when she'd mentioned that the overgrowth must be an indication of how long they'd been deserted, but he hadn't sounded too convinced. 

The real shock for Sarah had been when she'd put her hand out to touch one of the pristine cream walls: her hand had at first touched the surface she'd expected, then had slowly slipped out of sight - as if, she'd told him, and he'd agreed when he tried it himself, that her hand had pushed through the spaces between the molecules making up the wall. 

The Doctor stared at the wall now, his brow furrowed beneath his untidy mop of dark curls. 

'It is an impossibility!' He declared eventually in what Sarah always thought of as his loudest 'I'm in a foul mood and I don't care who knows it' voice. He kicked out and almost fell over as his foot passed part way though the structure then hit solidity.

That, of course, was the other thing: the phenomenon wasn't uniform. Sarah caught him and just managed to stop him from falling. He flashed her a grateful look, before sitting down to take his shoe off and rub his foot. She left him to it, and went back to looking closely at the structure for herself. 

~~~

__

And the walls came down.

All the way to hell.

~~~

The entire structure was windowless. The featureless exterior gave the place a melancholy air that was at odds with the peaceful surroundings. Sarah found herself musing on this as she walked around the building again, letting her fingers trail along the almost-but-not-quite-there wall. Such a peaceful, tranquil planet, and yet human settlers had stuck half a dozen buildings down in the middle of this floral paradise; large, ugly, colourless, featureless and utterly out of place in their environment.

What for? 

The Doctor's head peered around the corner of the building.

'Sarah?'

'Hmm?'

'Did we think to try the doors?'

'There weren't any.' Sarah walked over to him. 'We both went round the entire building: no doors.' Taking her arm, he steered her over to an area of the wall she'd been over herself not ten minutes earlier. He looked down at her.

'There are now,' he said archly. And putting a hand out, he pushed them gently. To Sarah's surprise, they opened inwards, coming to rest against the inner wall with a slight clunk. She looked up at the Doctor, suddenly apprehensive.

'I don't like this.'

'More strange feelings?' he teased.

She stuck her tongue out at him before replying tartly: 'Well, you have to admit, mysteriously appearing doors where five minutes ago there was a blank wall isn't normal.'

He fixed her with a wide-eyed stare. 'We could go back - ' All innocence.

She took a deep breath. 'No. You aren't the only one who can't stand a mystery, you know!' She walked forward into the building, trying to look far more confident than she was feeling.

~~~

__

Unreal city,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn.

This is where we/I/they wait.

I/We/They/Us

Peek-a-boo.

~~~

Sarah shivered as she crossed the threshold. Something had just changed. Behind her, she could sense the Doctor following her. This time, when he tapped her on the shoulder, she didn't jump.

'Do you notice anything strange?' he asked, quietly. 

'It's light in here, ' she whispered back, 'but there are no windows on this floor, and no visible lights.'

She could almost feel his habitual thoughtful frown: no need to turn around to confirm his expression.

'And why, ' he asked, still sotto voce, 'are we whispering?'

Sarah turned to look at him; he looked edgy. 'Well, you can raise _your_ voice if you want to.' 

His eyes were everywhere, searching, questioning. Without looking at her, he replied: 'No, somehow I don't think so.'

Sarah wandered down the corridors, half following the Doctor, half trying to look as if she knew what she was looking for on her own, and taking note of her surroundings: Long white antiseptic corridors laid out in a geometric pattern - regular, precise, ordered. Sliding doors, some open, some closed, some in that can't-make-up-their-mind stage, led into blank rooms, all of them the same size and shape.

All empty.

Sarah stood just inside the doorway to one of them and examined it. Like dozens she'd seen before it, it was stark, cold and bare. Just one clue, she thought. Just one notice, or item, or sign. Anything that could tell her what this place was. Or what was lurking here. 

Because she could feel it.

It wasn't a localised presence. For a brief moment, she had the strangest feeling she was inside something. But a something that was gnawing at the edges of her mind like a rat worrying a piece of rubbish. 

Time to go, and sod curiosity. Backing out of the room, she went looking for the Doctor.

~~~

__

Ring-a-ring-a-roses

Is it like this

We all fell down.

Ashes to ashes

In death's other kingdom

Dust to dust.

~~~

He was standing in front of a doorway that marked the end of this corridor. Reaching him, she placed her hand on his arm

'Doctor?' Something in the room, perhaps… she tried to see past him, but he pushed her away, abruptly.

'No, Sarah.'

Sarah sighed. 'You can't tell me that there's anything in there worse than we've faced before?'

She thought that he was going to argue, but instead, he moved aside to let her past, and stood beside the doorway, hands thrust deep into his pockets. She walked slowly into the room and stopped, staring in horror at the sight that greeted her.

There were bodies everywhere.

She backed away involuntarily, brought up short as she bumped into the Doctor's solid bulk. His arm was around her waist, supporting her, and she turned, burying her head for a moment against his chest. The material of his scarf was rough against her cheek. Straightening, she looked up and into his eyes, seeing the concern there, as he awkwardly patted her on the back.

'Nothing you can't handle?' If his slightly mocking tone was an attempt to distract her, she wasn't in the mood. Determined not to show her revulsion she met his gaze as steadily as she could.

'I've seen worse than that.' _If not by much, _she thought. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she walked into the room, taking in the scene. The bodies - maybe twenty or thirty of them - lay scattered over the floor like so many broken branches. A brown crust of dried blood, powdered where she and the Doctor had trodden on it, covered everything - bodies, floor, and walls. The corpses themselves drew the eyes, a morbid tableau of destruction, and she studied the scene with a horrified fascination: twisted, broken, torn and scattered. It looked as if something had simply walked in and torn them apart.

Except that wasn't the case at all. Not even close. She knelt beside one of the bodies. A human female. Sarah placed her hand delicately on the body, and swallowed a sudden rise of bile in her throat as her fingers brushed the leathery, yet strangely brittle skin. The corpse had dried rather than decayed. She'd been young, perhaps even pretty when alive. The girl's hands covered her face, the fingers embedded in the eye sockets. Another body, further along, had a hand buried deep in his own torso, a desiccated coil of his own intestines wrapped around his wrist. Some of the others were huddled together, entwined so closely that it was hard to tell if they'd been trying to stop each other from mutilating themselves, or had joined in the frenzy by attacking each other.

Sarah looked back at the Doctor, knowing that he saw the answer, but needing to say it anyway. 

'They did this to themselves,' she said quietly. Very gently, she laid a hand on the girl's head, feeling the brittle hair crinkle and break under her fingers. There was a whispering, in her head, on the very edge of perception.

'It's just a memory away,' she said, and slumped to the ground.

~~~

'Sarah!' Three long strides took the Doctor into the room and to her side. She lay curled slightly on the floor, one hand still on the dead girl's head. He turned her over gently. Despite her apparent relaxed position, every muscle was rigid.

'Oh, Sarah.' He brushed her hair back from her face, and checked her over quickly, finding no physical damage. Being careful to avoid disturbing her too much, he picked her up, a little awkwardly, and carried her from the room and out of the building. He was struggling by the time he'd reached what he hoped was a reasonable distance from the complex. Laying Sarah on the grass, he stared down at her, a worried frown on his face. 

'You're putting on weight, my girl.' He knelt at her side, checking her over. Her pulse was strong, but erratic. He was just about to check her eyes, when without warning, they sprang open, and she threw herself at him, hands clawing at his face and screaming incoherently. He slapped her across the face, once, hard enough to leave a mark.

Just as suddenly, she was still, staring at him, and then at her surroundings, shocked. 

'What happened?' She asked. She glared at him then and rubbed her cheek. 'Ow, that hurt!'

The Doctor's smile was rueful. 'I'm sorry, desperate measures, I'm afraid.' He helped her to stand up. 'Are you all right?'

She leaned on his arm for support. 'I think so. She looked back at the complex and shuddered. 'Down there - '

'What happened? Do you remember?' 

Sarah nodded. 'I touched that girl - and something touched me. There's a kind of - focus - I suppose you'd call it - in there.'

'You said something about 'A memory away' before you passed out,' the Doctor reminded her. 'Can you remember what you meant?'

'The whole place,' Sarah looked at him, hazel eyes fixed on his. 'It's a memory - that's why it's not quite real.'

He snorted. 'I don't mean to belittle your insight, Sarah. But that's not possible. That place is solid - ' he paused. 'Well, almost,' he conceded. 'Are you trying to tell me that what we felt and saw - and touched - back there - was an illusion? Poppycock!' 

'Who are you trying to convince?' Sarah asked. 'I know what I felt. And I know what I saw.'

'Given enough energy, it's possible, I suppose. A lot of energy. And I didn't see anything there that would account for that level of projection. Did you?'

Sarah chewed her bottom lip. 'No. But I have a theory.'

'Well, enlighten me!' he snapped at her, worry, as usual, masked by irritation.

'The planet itself.' Sarah said simply. The Doctor looked sceptical.

'The planet.'

'Like Zeta Minor, remember? I had the screaming heebie jeebies from the moment we landed there. This feels - well, not the same. But similar.'

He was standing in an instant, pacing. 'Of course. Low level mental fields generated by all lifeforms, even the lowest.' He stared down at her. 'You know, even in your time someone had stumbled onto that theory, you know.'

Sarah thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. 'Teilhard de Chardin - the so called 'Noosphere. I remember wading through _The Phenomenon of Man_ years ago. Aunt Lavinia insisted!' She paused. 'But that was all discredited.'

'Well, the theory was somewhat before its time, really. His ideas didn't regain much credence until measurable psychic abilities turned up in the human race over a century later.' He was staring moodily at the buildings below.

'You know, I think I know what that place was,' he said eventually. 

'I suppose you're going to tell me?'

'Suppose it was a mental hospital. An asylum. The residual emanations of a place like that would be terrifyingly powerful. Enough aberrant mental energy concentrated in a place that has had no higher mental activity to mould its noosphere…' She'd rarely seen him look afraid, but the look he turned on her now made her shiver. 'They could have killed each other then turned on themselves, tearing themselves apart. Whatever insanities they had would have been multiplied a thousand fold by what's here. By what their arrival drove to madness: A paradise planet, with no higher lifeforms, no value as a colony or a mining outpost. A perfect place to dump the insane, the weak minded, the psychotic.' He snorted. 'Of course, I'm guessing, but - '

'Well I'm convinced.' She shivered, despite the warm breeze. Suddenly, Eden looked a lot more menacing. 

He stared over the top of her head, looking at the peaceful, pastoral scene. 'A primitive, but untainted noosphere,' he whispered. 'Where nothing evolved to dominate the low-level mental fields generated by the interaction of life.' He looked down at Sarah. 'Unlike Earth, which has spawned at least three sentient lifeforms, and suffered interference from outside forces over its history.'

Sarah gripped his sleeve. 'Until _they_ came. So many minds, and if they _were_ mad…'

'They'd be open. They couldn't help but interact with it. They must have impressed it with a multitude of psychoses, delusions and fears. It might have taken decade or two, but we're talking about a low-level psychic field that can be extremely psycho-reactive under even the best circumstances. Eventually it would have begun to manifest their fears, and feed back into their minds. In the end, even the medical staff would have gone insane. What we saw -'

'Was the last act. The last few - the ones who lasted longest.' Sarah finished for him. 'Leaving a lasting psychic impression, and a physical manifestation?'

'It might get worse,' The Doctor said quietly. 'Something similar to this happened on a planet called Shiva, I remember reading about in the Academy. You didn't want to be there after dark.'

Sarah raised an eyebrow.

'Physical manifestation of some of the nastier archetypes from the human unconscious. A noosphere is capable of magnifying and giving form to every thought or feeling - conscious or subconscious,' the Doctor explained. 'It makes no distinction between the two. As here, there were so few lifeforms that the effects can be considerable. They had to destroy the planet eventually.'

'Then maybe we'd better get out of here?' Sarah suggested. The Doctor, however, was already moving.

She had to run to keep up with him. As usual.

~~~

__

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion 

And the act

Falls the shadow

I/we/they are not a shadow.

Reality 

Conception or perception?

They see. At last.

~~~

The TARDIS stood in the middle of the meadow where they'd landed: squatting serenely in the sea of grass as if oblong shaped blue boxes had every right to sprout there, in defiance of the laws of taste and nature. Sarah, relieved to see a safe haven, started to move towards it, only to find the Doctor holding her back.

'Not yet. Do you notice anything strange?'

She turned around to look, but there was nothing there except their shadows stretching out behind them across the grass.

'Just our shadows. Why?' then she realised. 'Oh. The sun's over there.'

Their shadows stretched away from them in two directions. But the shadows in the wrong place were multiplying, overlapping, growing. She looked around the meadow again, but could see nothing except the waving grass, darkening in the failing light, the TARDIS's shadow the only mark on its viridian perfection.

The shadow.

It rippled, borne on the waving fronds of greenery, a deeper inky black against the deepening gloom of the clearing. First a wavering oblong, the edges fluttering randomly as the evening breeze ruffled the greenery. But her eyes were drawn deeper into the umbra, seeing impossible shapes: a mass of writhing tentacles reminiscent of some Lovecraftian horror from beyond the dawn of time, that crawled over the ground in directions that defied the optical laws. And yet, at the same time, flickering on the edge of her vision, she could see - what? A hint of some monstrous claw? A leathery wing arching over the back of some anti-diluvian crocodilian? She shook her head, as if to clear it. Illusions, hallucinations, surely? She looked over at the Doctor, and saw the look of concern on his face. No, he saw it as well.

Whatever "it" was…

And the whispering, once on the distant edge of perception, now so loud that she twisted her head this way and that, trying to see who was beside her. But there was only the Doctor, dark curls bouncing in the breeze, expression made angular and almost cruel by the cast of shadows across his face, and the intent, wide-eyed stare as he looked at the TARDIS, the peeling blue paint of its exterior darkening as they watched, as if the shadows were poured over its surface.

The sky was now a deep, velvety purple, as the sun sank below the line marked by the giant cycads. Sarah drew closer to the Doctor, seeking reassurance from his presence. 

'What now?' she asked. Movement in the long grass caught her eye, as if something scuttled through the long leafy plants, hidden in the foliage. _Something that scuttled on eight long legs, shiny black body held above the ground… _

His fear? Or hers? 

'Doctor?' More urgently. 

'What? I don't -' he came back to her with a start, squeezed her hand reassuringly. 'It's concentrating on the TARDIS, we're just incidental. Try not to worry about anything.'

'Easier said than done,' she told him tartly. She shivered, aware that with the fast-setting sun, the warmth of the day was fading.

'It's mindless… surely?' The Doctor stared past her, to the TARDIS, now a deeper shade of dark amidst the growing shadow. 'Reactive, not pro-active.' Thinking out loud, Sarah thought.

'Why the TARDIS then - I mean, if it's reacting to thoughts and fears?' She broke off, seeing his face, even in the intensifying gloom, take on an even more worried look.

'The TARDIS is no machine, Sarah. If it can breach the defences surrounding the telepathic circuits… '

Sarah interrupted him. 'But what nightmares could a TARDIS manifest?' 

The Doctor balled a fist in his curls, almost tearing the hair out.

'Doctor?'

He pulled her away, and pushed her towards the hill where they'd sat earlier, reading. _When this had still seemed such an idyllic spot._ 'Wait here.' He told her in the voice that told her in no uncertain terms that she'd better do as he said. His long legs were taking him back down the hill towards the TARDIS before she could frame a retort. The darkness swallowed him before he reached the foot of the hill. Were the shadows drawing in around her as well? She looked around, wrestling with indecision. What would _her_ demons be? 

She made her mind up.

'Not bloody likely,' Sarah muttered to the direction the Doctor had taken. She set off after him.

~~~

The darkness was complete by the time he reached the foot of the hill. Not the total blackness of an absence of light, for there was still enough to see the deeper black of the TARDIS's familiar bulk, but an inky shadow that covered everything. The darkness that doesn't go away when you turn on the light.

A darkness that picked at the Doctor's mind as he approached the shadow-wrapped TARDIS, and whispered at the very limits of his hearing. Snippets of songs, of conversations, of poems, and cries, and screams… It threatened, it pleaded, it cajoled, promised. But in a fragmentary fashion. As if…

As if searching for context, for words, concepts. Picking through his and Sarah's minds for some basis for communication, sprinkled with a scattering of repeated phrases.

Except that it wasn't talking to him. Had _never_ been talking to him.

__

They weren't talking to _him_.

They wanted the _other_ mind. The TARDIS.

Was _She_ answering? He couldn't tell. 

It/They was/were aware of him again. Something moved in the darkness, and he tried not to think what it might be. _Why had he left Sarah alone? What if…_

He buried the thought. It would be used, turned against him. Concentrate, Doctor. Without the TARDIS… 

__

Sarah, alone… 

No. Concentrate.

Too late, as always. Something seized upon tendrils of feeling and fear, with what might have been a malicious delight. Scenario after scenario played out behind closed eyes.

__

Sarah dead. Sarah shot, crying his name. Sarah blinded, terrified. Sarah trapped in the darkness, alone. Sarah lost in a blasted wasteland on a dead planet, while a war raged around, torn apart on a shining metal slab… Image after image flashed before his eyes, and he fell to his knees, trying to block them, deny them.

'No!'

~~~

'Doctor?' Sarah called out for him, hearing his cry. Stumbling in the gloom, she fell over him. Flailing to keep her balance, and failing, she screamed as images flashed behind closed eyes: _Flicker_: darkness, and the terrifying sensation of blindness. _Flicker_: she was dying, the Doctor leaning over her, saying something… _flicker_ Lying in a hospital bed, an old woman, a knarled, age-spotted hand resting on the rough leather of an old book - _Le Morte d'Ar-_ _Flicker: lying on a cold metal slab, sharp knives pricking at her skin… Flicker, flicker, flickerflickerflicker…_

She screamed, and curled up into a ball, as if making herself smaller would somehow make it stop.

Something washed over her, like a dash of cold water on a hot summer day. 

__

Blue. Cool blue. Sea blue. Dark Blue. Comforting. Cool. 

White.

The images stopped, but she stayed where she was, huddled on the ground.

'Sarah!' A hand on her arm. With a whimper she hit out wildly, connected with something solid. Her hand brushed the familiar feel of rough wool. The Doctor's scarf. Her fingers closed on the material, and she couldn't hide a sob of relief. The Doctor patted her on the back.

'There there, it's all right. I think it's stopped for now.' 

She peered into the darkness, seeing only the vaguest impression of his face. 'I felt… I was… I saw…'

'Sshh. We've got a little time.' He helped her to her feet. 'Stay close.' His hand closed reassuringly on hers.

__

What had he_ seen?_ 'What happened?'

'I think the TARDIS distracted it, when we were threatened. Whatever's out there, the old girl seems to be its main target.'

The TARDIS was shrouded in shadows of shadows, still, overlapping pools of darkness that radiated a chill menace. She followed the Doctor's lanky form as he moved around to face the doors, pondering their next move. 

'Can we get in?'

'Not without letting _it_ in. I don't think it can attack the telepathic circuits from outside, no matter how strong its motivation.'

'It - or them?' Sarah asked dryly. She couldn't see his expression, but she could picture him sticking his bottom lip out the way he did when pondering something.

'I'm not sure the question's relevant,' he said eventually. 'Possibly it's some hybrid matrix - an amalgam of the personality patterns of the asylum inmates and the planet's noosphere.'

Sarah put her hands on her hips, although the effect was lost in the darkness surrounding them - night had fallen truly. She couldn't tell madness-spawned shadow from genuine night anymore. 'But there's got to be a way out, hasn't there?' _Before "it" notices us again…_

'Maybe.' The Doctor pouted moodily, and kept staring at the TARDIS, still wrapped in writhing shadows. 'Just maybe…'

'What?'

The Doctor ignored her, brushed her aside as he stepped forward, walking towards the TARDIS. Her hand grabbing his shirt sleeve didn't even slow him down: her fingers slipped from the white cotton as if it were water in her hand. Reaching into the shadow, he placed his hand upon the surface of the time machine. To Sarah, struggling to see in the gloom, it looked as if the shadows had simply swallowed him.

~~~

__

There was nothing. Or an absence. No context. 

Only the rough/slick surface of the TARDIS's exterior shell, the eternal paradox of what _is_ and what merely _appears to be_.

All else was darkness.

And sound.

The cacophony of thousands of voices, each clamouring to be heard.

Enough to drive anyone mad.

__

In the midst of the word he was trying to say…

'What do you want?'

The words fell, leaden, in the dark, lost in the voices.

Which seemed to turn their attention to _him_, at last.

Good. Now to keep it/them distracted.

The temptation, however, to learn, to ask, to understand…

Don't get distracted, Doctor. It's the _other_ mind you need. Now…

The clamour of voices rose to a howl, filling his senses to overload. Dimly, he was aware of a change. In posture? His hand slid _down_ the TARDIS surface, and he pressed harder, desperate not to lose contact. 

__

The Other… the female… there…

'No!' The Doctor sensed the shift in focus, as the entity/gestalt of the noosphere turned its attention onto the easier target. Desperately, he tried to intercept, to distract. Sarah's mind, dimly felt in the morass of insanity that surrounded them. Frail, by comparison, but burning more strongly than he might have thought.

You WILL NOT have her.

'You're just a snark!' A random thought, the insult implied and understood even if the sense was not. "It" seized upon the images his mind offered, integrating them into its fractured psyche, into the madness.

__

…in the midst of his laughter and glee…

Was it fixed on him again? He had to hope.

There. He had its attention.

'You. Will. Not. Have. Her.' Did he mean the TARDIS? Or Sarah?

Did it matter?

Whispers in the dry grass…

__

Take you, then…

'Never!'

Defiance flung out to the uncaring _totality _that gibbered inside, outside and between his mind. Fragments of lives lived, lost, taken, fractured were flung back at him. Death, pain, death, anger, fear, death, delight, ecstasy… 

There.

A familiar touch, rarely acknowledged, even more rarely approached. The sense only of - what? 

Blue.

Cool blue, washing away the voices like a tide ebbing from the shore.

__

…he shall softly and silently vanish away…

And the voices were gone, the darkness vanished, replaced by bright light, and white.

~~~

'For the snark _was_ a boojum, you see!'

Sarah awoke at the sound of the Doctor's voice declaiming loudly. He lay on his side, a few feet away from her on the console room floor, eyes shut tight. Pushing herself up at least as far as her knees, she crawled over to him, and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Doctor?'

The Doctor opened one blue eye, and squinted, then opened the other. He flashed a toothy, falsely cheery grin at her, and tried to stand up. Unfortunately, he'd been lying with his head under the angular bulk of the TARDIS console. For the next couple of minutes, the console room reverberated almost to the sound of him swearing in fluent Venusian, one hand clutching the top of his head.

'What happened?' Sarah asked, once he'd calmed down. He didn't answer her immediately, just busied himself with setting the controls on the console. Only when the familiar asthmatic wheeze of the TARDIS's dematerialisation split the air, fading as they entered the relative calm of the vortex, did he speak.

'Rather too much like falling down the Mad Hatter's rabbit hole. Or is that rather "more like being stuffed head first into a tea pot." Either way, I don't recommend that place as a holiday spot.' He didn't look at her, he just stared morosely at the console.

'That's not…'

'No. No it isn't.' He finally turned to stare at her, and she shivered. 'You touched only the fringes of it, Sarah.' One hand raised, as if to touch her cheek, dropped down onto the console again without reaching her, and busied itself programming something into the co-ordinates panel. His other hand patted the console. 'Good girl. Didn't think she'd do it, but with the telepathic circuits under attack, I thought she'd respond if I could contact her.'

'The TARDIS rescued us?' Sarah remembered a pit in the Vatican, falling to certain death, only for the TARDIS to let her inside in the nick of time, back in Europa. 'Thank you,' she patted the console lightly as she whispered, feeling a bit silly for talking to a machine. 

Did the ever-present hum in the background deepen slightly?

__

Blue/White. The sense of something vaster than the ocean touching her mind, just for an instant. And gone.

'…message, and I'll have to place a beacon, as well.'

'Pardon?' Sarah turned her attention back to the Doctor, slapping the side of her head to clear it.

'It'll warn off anyone who might land. Hopefully until Gallifrey send someone to try to sort out the mess down there.' He pressed a button on the console. 'Or they make the planet off limits.' If it were possible, his face looked longer than usual.

'What's wrong?' A stupid question, she thought, the moment she'd asked it. She knew how much he hated asking for help.

'Nothing,' he said, turning away from her abruptly. 'They'll cure or destroy it. They have to. Not even they would be stupid enough…' 

'To use it for something?' Sarah finished for him.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.


End file.
